Neuroplasticity: How Your Brain Learns, Adapts, and Grows

Welcome back, everyone, to another new episode of the Truth, Lies Alzheimer's television show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. Today I'm going to share with you a fascinating thing that our brains are able to do throughout our entire lives. It's called neuroplasticity. Some of you may have heard of it, some of you may have not, but it's actually a really important thing to be aware of that our brains are able to do. So what exactly is that? Well, it is the brain's ability to reorganize itself. By forming new neural connections across all ages and are driven by our experiences, our training, and our environment. Why should this matter to you or me? Because it enhances our ability to continue to learn and remember things. It aids in recovery after an injury like a traumatic brain injury. And it supports our ability to adapt to new skills and to new environments. So some of the core concepts that are involved in neuroplasticity includes the structural changes that are happening in our brains, which means our brains are able to make new connections and functional changes, which is how the networks in our brains are activated while we're performing tasks. Now, there are 4 types of neuroplasticity. Number 1 is the experience-dependent plasticity, and number 2 is use-dependent. So this falls into the old adage, use it or lose it. There's injury-induced plasticity during rehabilitation and pharmacologically modulated plasticity. And we have found that musical training changes the cortical maps in our brains. We've also found that learning to juggle induces rapid brain remodeling, that meditation affects attention networks and gray matter in our brains, and that language learning reshapes our bilateral language networks. During our lifespan, during infancy and childhood, the plasticity formation is rapid, but occurs during critical periods of that development time. Once we move into adulthood, plasticity formation becomes slower but robust with deliberate practice. And then with aging in general, plasticity remains persistent and is mitigated by mental activity physical activity, sleep, and social engagement. Some of the factors that promote healthy plasticity are being deliberate and implementing repetitive practices, getting adequate, adequate sleep for consolidation, practicing good nutritional habits like Omega-3s. Also, physical exercise increases and supports our circulation. Cognitive challenges and novelty and stress management to avoid chronic stress. We're going to pause for a quick minute to go to a short break, and when we come back, we're going to continue with today's topic on neuroplasticity. So don't go away. But when you have a chance, please check out our newly updated website for new resources and information and tips that you can hopefully use on your dementia journey. Don't go away.

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All righty, we are back and we've been talking about neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. Now I'm gonna talk about some of the practical applications of this neuroplasticity. So for learning, it takes deliberate practice, spaced repetition, and the spaced, for rehabilitation, targeted, and cognitive therapy. Pertaining to mental health, it's therapies that leverage plasticity. Now, regarding habit changes, they occur with small, consistent routines. And regarding education, they occur through a multi-sensory approach and through active learning. And some of the common misconceptions about neuroplasticity is that it is not exclusive to— conversely, it persists but does vary with age. So it was always thought for the longest, longest time that plasticity only occurred in our childhood development years. But it turns out that's not true. It continues throughout our entire life, which is such a positive benefit for all of us. And it's not unlimited as biology, um, but biology does impose constraints on that. And that relearning is completely possible. With targeted practice. So a simple 3-step framework to apply is to identify a targeted skill or behavior, to engage in deliberate corrective practices, and reinforce by getting good quality sleep and spaced repetition. So here are the takeaways on neuroplasticity. That the brain is dynamic and continuously rewires with, throughout our lives with our varied experiences. That small, consistent efforts can lead to meaningful changes. That sleep, exercise, and challenging practices optimize plasticity. Everyone can harness plasticity to learn, to recover, and to adapt. So I actually have some real news today that hopefully you can use. The question is, do men and women in their 60s show different signs of Alzheimer's before any memory loss begins? Well, this question was the focus of a study involving 503 adults from New York City. The participants were from age 60 to 69 years old and did not have any cognitive impairment. The group was racially and ethnically diverse, including 305 Hispanics, 120 non-Hispanic Blacks, and 78 non-Hispanic white individuals. So what the study entailed was researchers used brain scans to look for specific proteins and structural changes in the brains of the people they were studying, and they measured amyloid and tau. Which are proteins that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. They also measured the thickness of the brains and looked for signs of vascular injury, white matter hyperintensities, and they use a measure called a standardized uptake value ratio to determine the density of these proteins. Well, the study found a noteworthy mismatch in the result. They found women actually had higher levels of amyloid proteins in their brains compared to the men. This difference was statistically significant. Women also showed more tau protein in the middle to the late stages of protein spread known as BRCA stages 3 to 6. In BRCA stages 3 to— I mean, 3 to 4, women had a mean score of 1.07 while men had a score of 0.93. Now, despite having more of these marker proteins, the women did appear to have better brain structural health. Their brain's thickness in regions usually affected early by Alzheimer's disease, um, was 2.65 millimeters compared to 2.61 millimeters in men, which is actually a significant difference. Women also had lower amounts of vascular injury. So genetic factors, as they have learned, have also influenced these patterns. The difference in tau protein between the sexes was much larger in people who carry the APOE4 gene, which is a major risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease. Among those carriers, women had significantly more tau protein even in the earliest stages of the spread. Now, these results were consistent across all racial and ethnic groups and were not affected by their ages or their education level. Uh, you can find the, uh, citation for this study in the show notes. And that's going to wrap this episode up for today. You're watching the Truth, Lies Alzheimer's television show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. And don't forget, we have a brand new updated website, so I hope you stop by and visit it. It's mindingdementia.com. Check it out. And I will be back next week with another new episode for you. Of this show. And in the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week. Stay happy, stay healthy, and I'll be back with— for you next week. Take care for now. Bye-bye.